Japanese Torrent Sites (music, anime, etc.)

I find a good way of keeping motivated is listening to Japanese music and watching Japanese anime/TV, so I'm posting some Torrent trackers which I find useful. If you have any others, please post them as well.

I should point out, for people who actually care about legal issues, that at least some of these sites contain illegal materials. Boxtorrents for instance features blatant DVD rips of anime that have been licensed and subbed and dubbed in the US (at great cost I should add), which sounds like theft in my book. I'm not trying to be holier than the pope here, but at least go to something like www.animesuki.com, which is a good resource of fansubbed material that is not yet licensed outside Japan, and doesn't use stolen commercial material. I'm not trying to spark off a fansub debate here, but there is still a vast difference between stealing commercial material and fansubbing series that are not available outside Japan.

For people who can afford to buy, please check a good review site like www.animeondvd.com and buy from a good discounted retailer like www.dvdpacific.com. These days, lots of complete seasons of series are perfectly legally available in discounted thinpacks for less than $30.

astridtops wrote:

I should point out, for people who actually care about legal issues, that at least some of these sites contain illegal materials. Boxtorrents for instance features blatant DVD rips of anime that have been licensed and subbed and dubbed in the US (at great cost I should add), which sounds like theft in my book. I'm not trying to be holier than the pope here, but at least go to something like www.animesuki.com, which is a good resource of fansubbed material that is not yet licensed outside Japan, and doesn't use stolen commercial material. I'm not trying to spark off a fansub debate here, but there is still a vast difference between stealing commercial material and fansubbing series that are not available outside Japan.

Whether it's illegal or not depends on your country. Not to mention that a Bittorrent tracker per definition can't have illegal material because they only contain links/information of where the media is.

I personally don't understand why some fansub groups (and homepages like animesuki) removes an anime series as soon as it's licensed in USA. USA is not exactly the only land where people speaks English. The language is used internationally, after all. Moreover, fansub groups don't use any of the commersial material from USA.

Back to the topic:isoHuntThey don't specialize in anime, but collects torrents from many different sites. Nice to have if you have trouble to find an anime.

Most people probably know of this already, but for completeness I should mention www.anidb.com -- the most complete anime database out there. Among other nice things, it has tools that allow you to index and add your entire collection there. It uses ed2k links to uniquely identify files.

I'm not much into Anime, but I watch heaps and heaps of Japanese drama, and get most of it from http://d-addicts.com/ - there's a few that I really didn't like, but some are really good, most of them are only 10 or 12 episodes and don't drag on like western ones do, but I've been watching one called Shinsengumi recently that has 50 or so episodes and is set in the 1800's when the black ships came to Japan and it's awesome! any of you guys into drama?

I've been trying to get into some j-dramas recently. Can you recommend any that would be good for beginner-intermediate level learners? I just finished my first series, My Boss My Hero, and something along that level would be perfect. Thanks.

I haven't seen that series, but I'll try to find it. Drama's are great practice, I usually watch a series right through once with the fansubs and then watch them all again with no subtitles, which works really well because you know what's going on. One's I'd reccomend that have normal Japanese are: Shotgun Marrige (できちゃった結婚), Pride (プライド), When I Fall in Love (恋におちた - I haven't finished this one yet, but it's cooler than the title suggests), Crying out Love, in the Centre of the World (世界の中心で愛をさけぶ - this one is REALLY sappy, but watchable), Please god, give me more time (神様もう少しだけ - this one is really famous, about a 16 year old girl who gets aids, so it's a pretty serious and sad one, but I really liked it) and News Woman (ニュースの女 - this one is so/so, but it has nice Japanese so it's worth watching for practice)

The other ones I have I didn't really like, there was one called Tokyo Friends that I couldn't get through, and I also have this one series called Trick that I'm halfway through that's really awesome, but it's about busting cults and physics and magic tricks and stuff, so it's kinda hard to follow with no subtitles. At school I saw the first episode of a new one called Cheap Love that looked great, but I'm back to 56k at the moment, so can't download it :/

I'm a bit late to the party here, but I'd like to throw in another vote for Trick. Season 1 is a lot of fun, though season 2 drags a bit. We're hoping it picks up in speed again. My wife is hooked too, and she has no interest in learning Japanese. There is some really interesting wordplay: for example, in one episode the bad guy is exposed by using the difference between hashi (bridge) and hashi (chopsticks).

I've also been enjoying Lunch Queen, a fairly sappy "who likes whom" type of drama set in a restaurant. I wish they'd finish subtitling the last 2 episodes.

Sorry: "We do not condone piracyPlease don't post links to torrent sites and other sources of illegal downloads. See guidelines for participating in the forums/community for more information." - via http://forum.koohii.com/misc.php?action=rules

nest0r wrote:

Sorry: "We do not condone piracyPlease don't post links to torrent sites and other sources of illegal downloads. See guidelines for participating in the forums/community for more information." - via http://forum.koohii.com/misc.php?action=rules

In that case, I'll go ahead and bookmark all the sites in this thread before it gets deleted. Although, considering the age of the thread (it was created November 2006), I don't think that's going to happen.

vgambit wrote:

nest0r wrote:

Sorry: "We do not condone piracyPlease don't post links to torrent sites and other sources of illegal downloads. See guidelines for participating in the forums/community for more information." - via http://forum.koohii.com/misc.php?action=rules

In that case, I'll go ahead and bookmark all the sites in this thread before it gets deleted. Although, considering the age of the thread (it was created November 2006), I don't think that's going to happen.

Are you making some kind of point? That Fabrice needs to go and clean all the threads that he didn't catch over the years? Or that the rule is wrong, and we should be able to post links to pirating copyrighted works?

woodwojr wrote:

The rule is wrong, at the least insofar as it conflates "torrent sites" and "sources of illegal downloads".

(It also fails to define a jurisdiction under which legality is to be established. Has anything weird been outlawed in Sealand recently?)

~J

I think it's good as a general guideline. What more do you want? Your comment sounds a bit nitpicky and petty to me. It's up to mature users to balance themselves and keep this place relatively neutral when it comes to condoning piracy of copyrighted works.

usis35 wrote:

Anyone knows where I can download Friends or Seinfeld in Japanese?

I don't know if you can dl them directly, but I watch Seinfeld and The Simpsons(シンプソンズ） in Japanese at nicovideo.jp. Though, I'm sure you could download them if you get a FLV downloading plugin/program.

@woodwojr : got a better definition, wanna write me a 40 page long article to cover all cases? This is a guideline of course. I'm not a robot. I may also moderate some posts that fall under that rule, and leave others because I don't have all day to go and check those sites.

I am the administrator of this forum btw, not your country. This is a party and I set whichever "dress code" I want.

If the laws of your country or mine would have anything to say it would be in extreme cases of spreading hatred or diffamation, in which case they will certainly be more strict than I am!

Thread is open for discussion, new posts with links to illegal downloads will be deleted.

Your policies are obviously your business, but unless you're claiming to be a sovereign country, you still have no power over what is or is not "illegal". I can see how one (like, say, nest0r) might see this distinction as nitpicky, but I think it's important to remember that laws are not the same everywhere and that consequently that guideline will mean vastly different things to different people, making it not very useful for encouraging conforming behaviour.

Edit: of course, picking a specific set of laws as the standard for testing legality would remove this, so I guess you have "power" over legality in that way. Aside from jurisdiction-picking, though, "my site, my rules" still doesn't apply to powers traditionally reserved for sovereign nations.

Could you be more specific (via PM, if desired)? As far as I know, both the idea that the creation of law is a governmental rather than personal power and the idea that different countries have different laws (and that thus there is no jurisdiction-independent concept of legality) are on fairly firm ground, and if that honestly is not the case I'd love to be informed so I don't make the mistake again.

You know, some of us honestly like our rules to be unambiguous. "Common sense" is a hideously dangerous thing.

Edit: ファブリス: one concise way to reword that rule might be "We do not condone copyright infringement. Please do not request assistance in infringing copyright [according to chosen jurisdiction—"your local" might work, but is somewhat loopholey] or assist or encourage others to infringe copyright."

The world is imperfect. Communication through words is imperfect. At the end of the day I may have to make a judgment sometimes as to whether some post is suitable or not for this forum. I moderate this forum obviously with the best intentions. Whether my judgment is valid or invalid, somebody has to make a decision; and it falls under my responsibility.

These "ambiguous" guidelines give you the freedom to exercise some judgment as to what would be suitable and what would not. Like I said in the corresponding sticky topic, I don't have all day to check links, I'm just asking people to be reasonable.